Educational Science

Mysterious 'Hobbit' Relative May Have Lived on Isolated Island

A mysterious relative of the extinct human species nicknamed the hobbit may have once lived on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, new research suggests. This finding could one day help shed light on the evolution of the hobbit, the researchers noted in the study. In 2003, scientists unearthed 18,000-year-old fossils...

What Is a Human? Long-Standing Debate Surrounds Our Family Tree

Several ancient human species and relatives have been unearthed in bits and pieces over the years, including one with an orange-size brain, another dubbed the hobbit for its miniature size and a flat-faced hominin with a huge brow ridge. Although these finds have opened more windows into the evolutionary landscape...

Ancestors of the mysterious extinct human lineage nicknamed hobbits may have been discovered, a new study finds. The newfound individuals may have been even littler than the hobbits, and date much further back in time (from some 700,000 years ago), scientists added. This suggests these ancestors may have shrunk rapidly...

Food for Thought: Human Teeth Likely Shrank Due to Tool Use

Wisdom teeth may have shrunk during human evolution as part of changes that started with human tool use, according to a new study. The research behind this finding could lead to a new way of figuring out how closely related fossil species are to modern humans, scientists added. Although modern...

Why Are Human Babies So Helpless?

Some animals come into this world more self-sufficient than others. Many can fend for themselves without any parental supervision almost immediately — picture baby sea turtles hatching on the sand and then somehow finding their way to the ocean. Other animals, like newborn giraffe calves, are able to clamber upright...

Why Neanderthals Likely Fathered Few Kids with Modern Humans

Humans today often carry around a small chunk of DNA from Neanderthals, suggesting we interbred with our closest known extinct relatives at some point in our history. So why isn't there more Neanderthal DNA in modern humans? Turns out, the Y chromosome may have been key in keeping the two...

Neanderthal-Human Trysts May Be Linked to Modern Depression, Heart Disease

Ancient trysts between Neanderthals and modern humans may have influenced modern risks for depression, heart attacks, nicotine addiction, obesity and other health problems, researchers said. The Neanderthals were once the closest relatives of modern humans. Scientists recently discovered that Neanderthals and modern humans once interbred; nowadays, about 1.5 to 2.1...

Newfound Human Species Suggests Africa Was Evolutionary Melting Pot

The most recently discovered extinct human species may have lived less than 1 million years ago, researchers have discovered. This finding suggests that a diverse range of human species might have lived at the same time in Africa, just as they might have in Asia, researchers said. In 2015, scientists...

Why Humans Have Slender Faces and Neanderthals Don't

Neanderthals had protruding facial features because of the way their bodies deposited and dealt with bone, a new study finds. In Neanderthals, facial bone deposits continue into the teenage years, whereas in humans (Homo sapiens), bone removal during childhood leads to a flatter face, the researchers found. Neanderthals, the closest...

Nom Nom! Paleo Diet Helped Humans Evolve Speech

Scientists who forced volunteers to chew raw goat flesh (yes, chew) have found that such meat-gnawing likely caused human teeth and jaws to shrink throughout our evolutionary history. Slicing raw flesh into smaller pieces and then chewing would have helped ancient hominins spend less time and energy eating than their...